Reusse: It might be time to crown Crown with its first UMAC championship

Tackle football is a grueling activity. Incentives are required to maintain full intensity. At the top levels, that becomes financial, and the adulation of the masses when things are going well.

What does it take for coaches at the grassroots levels to get their athletes to commit to 30-40 hours a week to get ready for those three hours on a Friday night or a weekend?

After spending time in the work areas for the Crown College Polars and their coach, Anthony Franz, at midweek, there was a reminder that commitment can be increased by selling dreams of glory, no matter how outrageous those might seem.

Crown is a Christian college that carried the name St. Paul Bible until 1992. Since it had been relocated in the countryside outside St. Bonifacius since 1969, it was determined that it might be time for a new title.

The college also has done that with nicknames for its athletics: The school went from the Crusaders to the Storm in 2002, then to the Polars in 2022. This allowed a Polar Bear that had been a mascot for a while to become more logical.

Crown started playing football in 1984 and, under any nickname, it has not been successful with frequency. After winning its home game Saturday, Crown reached its first four-game winning streak since 2014.

The one time I had visited Crown for a football game came in 2017, when St. Scholastica was the visitor. The Duluth school had not started football until 2008, yet it was quickly the power of the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference. The Saints’ victory on that day put them at 58-3 over seven UMAC seasons.

What are you going to do with four football teams, when you need six to keep your automatic berth in the NCAA Division III playoffs? In the current case, the UMAC has Greenville from Illinois and Westminster from Missouri as football-only members — and teams also play three opponents twice to get to eight conference games.

Franz wasn’t much of a player, by his admission, so he started coaching at 18. He went to college at Lindenwood in Missouri — and worked as an assistant in this extra-small college football, at Dordt in Iowa and Trinity International in Illinois.

He was hired at Crown post-pandemic for the 2021 season. Four years, 6-33 overall, 5-20 in the UMAC, so why was this coach sitting in his chair in a small office, smiling and saying: “We’ve never won a UMAC title at Crown, and a UMAC team has never won a Division III playoff game. But ...”

Then, Franz shrugged — a shrug that read, “There’s a first time for everything.”

The first part of such a dream for glory could be doable. The UMAC has been up for grabs since St. Scholastica fell off and then switched conferences.

So perhaps Crown, with the arrival of quarterback Jamarrius Courtney, could be this season’s upstart at the top. As for finally putting the UMAC in the win column in the D-III playoffs ... that’s a fine smile you have there, coach, but let’s keep our hopes on Planet Earth.

The UMAC has sent 13 teams to the playoffs with the automatic berth. Always, that team is banished to play on the home field of a D-III power. Those UMAC champs are 0-13 and have been outscored, by my math, 720-81.

Of course, none of those teams had Courtney, rumbling and romping at quarterback. He’s a sophomore, started at Cooper High School, went to Benilde-St. Margaret’s for a half-year and wound up at Chaska.

“I spent two years at Iowa Central, a junior college that turns out a lot of D-I players, and didn’t really get to play much,” Courtney said. “I was getting a lot of contact from Coach here, saying, ‘We’re here for you.’ I didn’t know he lives a block away from where I’m living in Chaska.”

Courtney stopped looking for higher offers and decided to stay close to home. Crown has 1,800 students, the majority being commuters. He lives at home, too. But he’s at school early — because Franz has his weekday practices from 6 to 8 a.m.

Courtney is 6-foot-3, a solid 220 pounds. “More a runner than a passer, it looks like,” I said.

He smiled wide — does that a lot — and said, “I can pass.”

On Saturday, the Crown offense looked stuck against a stout Westminster defense. It was 6-6 early in the third quarter, then Courtney took a center snap, a step right, paused, then a burst that popped him open for a go-ahead, 71-yard touchdown run.

Later, it was 19-6 (the final) and Westminster had Crown pinned at its 5. Courtney bulled straight ahead, as defenders held on, jumped on and fell off as he went 41 yards to get the Polars out of trouble.

The QB finished with 142 yards on 22 carries, putting his rushing total at 990 yards — 11 shy off the school record with four games remaining.